Fraction characters: one half, one quarter, three quarters
Three fractions have their own characters and named entities: one quarter, one half and three quarters, at U+00BC, U+00BD and U+00BE.
At a glance
- Character
- ¼ ½ ¾
- Named entity
- ¼ ½ ¾
- Decimal reference
- ¼ ½ ¾
- Hex reference
- ¼ ½ ¾
- Unicode code point
- U+00BC, U+00BD, U+00BE
- Unicode name
- VULGAR FRACTION ONE QUARTER, ONE HALF, THREE QUARTERS
- In the entity reference
- Fractions
In detail
These three are in the Latin-1 range, which is why they have short named entities and why they render reliably in every font you are likely to encounter. They are the only fractions with that guarantee. The wider set, thirds, fifths, sixths, eighths and the rest, lives in the Number Forms block starting at U+2150, has no named entities, and depends on the font having drawn them.
A vulgar fraction is a single character, not three. That has consequences beyond appearance: it counts as one character in a length limit, it cannot be broken across a line, and a string comparison against the digit slash digit form fails. Recipe and measurement data that mixes both forms will not group or deduplicate correctly.
Search is the reason to think carefully before using them in content people will look for. Someone typing one half as a digit, a slash and a digit does not match the single character unless your index normalises, and compatibility normalisation does map these characters to their expanded forms, so the fix exists but has to be switched on deliberately.
For a fraction that has no precomposed character, the fraction slash at U+2044 between ordinary digits is the correct construction. In a font with the relevant typographic feature the surrounding digits are rendered as a proper numerator and denominator; in one without, it degrades to something close to an ordinary slash, which is still readable.
Examples
<p>Add ½ a teaspoon of salt.</p>
<p>¼ inch clearance, ¾ turn to lock.</p><p>one third: ⅓</p>
<p>two fifths: ⅖</p>
<p>built with a fraction slash: 5⁄16</p>⅓ is U+2153 and ⅖ is U+2156. Font coverage for this block is not universal.
Things that catch people out
- Only the quarter, half and three quarters characters are safe everywhere. The rest of the Number Forms block can fall back to a missing glyph box.
- A recipe that mixes the single character and the digit slash digit form will not deduplicate, and a scaling function that parses one will choke on the other.
- These characters cannot be styled as a superscript over a subscript, because the whole fraction is one glyph. Design around the font, not against it.
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152 entities across 9 categories
Commonly Used
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±Math(35)
$Currency(8)
…Punctuation(21)
©Symbols(24)
πGreek(30)
½Fractions(6)
●Geometric(7)
æLatin Special(8)
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Related HTML entities
All html entities →Superscript one, two and three in HTML
The superscript digit characters at U+00B9, U+00B2 and U+00B3, their entity forms, the rest of the superscript block, and when the sup element is better.
Division sign (÷) in HTML
The division sign at U+00F7, its entity forms, why standards bodies discourage it, and the slash and fraction characters that replace it in published maths.
Per mille sign (‰) in HTML
The per mille sign at U+2030, its entity forms, where parts per thousand are the natural unit, and the per ten thousand character used for basis points.
Mathematical operator entities: sets, logic and calculus
Named entities for summation, integral, partial differential, set membership, union, intersection and the logical connectives, with their code points.
Right arrow (→) in HTML
The rightwards arrow at U+2192, its entity forms, using it in a call to action without confusing a screen reader, and how it behaves in right to left text.
Left arrow (←) in HTML
The leftwards arrow at U+2190, its entity forms, why a back link needs a real destination, and the direction problem in right to left interfaces.
Tools for this
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